ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the idea of re-death and the search for a Self that is not subject to the cycle of repeated deaths. It explores the concepts of Brahman and tman and the discovery of their identity the central teaching of the Upaniads. The chapter focuses on the teachings of the Upaniads; it is the urgency of same problem of suffering and repeated death that motivated the Buddha, Mahvra, Goala, and the leaders of other sects of this time, or slightly later, to seek their own liberating ways of life. Veda, and the Upaniads, which constitute the latest portions of the Vedas, separated by perhaps a thousand years, a dramatic change in worldview occur. Departing from the ritualistic traditions of the earlier Vedic age, the Upaniadic sages were engaged in a radical rethinking of the nature of self and reality that was destined to deeply influence the course of religion, philosophy, and life in India and beyond.
